Did Coldplay Really Have To Make That Kind Of Song?

Recently Coldplay has collaborated with the Chainsmokers for the new song Something Just Like This.
Because of the two groups popularity, the song has gotten quite the buzz.
It will quickly become the most overplayed song on the radio.
That song that every station plays twenty times an hour.
And it is only a four minute song!
How does that work?
Personally I used to like Coldplay before they went all pop.
Before a they ran through the streets forSky Full Of Stars and played the Super Bowl with Beyonce.
Then Coldplay sounded like a good British band.
You could hear the British sounds from them.
They were a band, so they were considered rock, but what they played barely qualified as that.
Their style may have been even soft alternative, if that is even a thing.
It made them instantly recognizable and also made for a great joke in a movie.
Now they sound like a British band who is trying to stay with the new trend of EDM music, which they are clearly not made to do.
They were a soft rock band, who relied on the songwriting and singing of the lead singer and now they are going into dance music.
I was turned off by that dramatic of a change.
They can’t keep up.
As for the Chainsmokers, I only know them for that one song on the radio.
Which don’t get me wrong, I liked the song, I say liked because I believe any human being who likes a song after hearing it two thousand times in a week span needs to see someone.
I’d elaborate on that further, but I do not have the credentials for things like that.
The new song by the two groups who I, at best, like marginally, sings of a man who is not a superhero but wants to find a loved one.
It displays the good songwriting that made Coldplay a household nameTand it was written as if it was released on X & Y.Yes I know that I wrote that lyrics mean nothing.
Ignore that for now, will ya?
Let’s focus on the new Coldplay song.
It talks of a man reading of superheros, like Batman and Superman and seeing that he is not one of them.
Those mentions alone make the song great.
Because as we all know anything with Batman is great.
Whenever you don’t know what to include in something, just put Batman in it, and it will be great.
That is a fact of life.
I’m pretty sure that it is even a commandment.
When you combine Batman with other superheroes and mythic legends then you have a winning formula for a song.
I always felt that Chris Martin’s song writing style was like Rob Thomas, the lead singer of Matchbox 20.
He will never win the best song writer award.
People will put the likes of John Lennon and Bob Dylan ahead of them.
But the guys know how to write a song, I give them that.
He can sing a song with meaning and make you feel something after hearing it.
Some of these artists today make me question just why it is they chose music as a profession, since they can barely form a sentence.
My question with the song is why did it have to become a club song?
A song that I will hear on Friday nights at the bar as I decide whether to meet a girl or have a drink.
Prior experience shows me that the more I drink, the better I am in that environment.
I seem to care less and act more like a jerk, which oddly enough works.
What good came of creating an EDM feel to the song?
It seems to me that the song tries to be uptempo, but it is sung like a Beatles song, which is confusing.
There is an audience of fitness rooms that want pop songs to do this.
They want the songs in the high enough RPM so that people can listen to it as they work out.
But the emotion in the song is what makes music great.
A song is the one true art that can for a few minutes make you feel differently.
Poetry can’t do that.
Although I do try to make you think and laugh when reading this, there is no beat as you read this, which does impact what you get from here.
Movies try to touch your heart, or scare the living crap out of you, but they take so long to get there.
You have to invest two hours to change how you feel.
But a song can make you cry or dance as you listen to it.
In a short amount of time your mood changed because of that song.
You could say that the other art forms try to do this feat, but they are not nearly as efficient as music.
Just a few beats and you are back to a different time and place.
To a happy place as a kid in the backyard when the song would blast as you were in the pool.
Or to a sad place that reminds you of a lost one that you still miss.
I view the odd arrangement in the song as if John Lennon’s classic song Imagine was written today.
My god, the Chainsmokers, or some producer would get their hands on it and change the original slow tempo that the song had, and make it more pop friendly, more of a song that can be heard everywhere,
From the gym, to the bar, to your house.
The laid-back tempo of Imagine works because it goes with the message of the song.
I shouldn’t be dancing to it as I imagine of a world where peace is achieved and John Lennon didn’t want me to.
At least I don’t think he did.
The same goes for Something Just Like This.
I don’t want to be enticed to jump up and down when this comes on.
To be compelled to move around when I hear the words “I’ve been reading books of old.”
The message of the song is so beautiful that you can genuinely feel like Chris Martin really feels the confusion that the man in the song has and the lyrics are great in that they are relatable yet deep at the same time.
We have all dream of being a superhero, but then we realize that we cannot be one and are happy with finding someone to love.
As for the direction of the song because of the collaboration, it was almost as if Coldplay sang the song and then the Chainsmokers changed it up afterwards by giving it the up beat, EDM kick that they thought it needed.
This song is a good example as to why I stopped listening to Coldplay.

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Theodore Ficklestein is a blogger, author and writer whose blog post you may have just read. He has written three poetry books and has a upcoming novel being released in 2017. You support his work by becoming a patron on his Patreon page.